Johannesburg:
South African police officers killed more than 30 armed miners who charged them at a Lonmin PLC platinum mine, authorities said on Friday, as a national newspaper warned the time bomb ticking over poor South Africans has exploded.
Thursday's shootings are one of the worst in South Africa since the end of the apartheid era, and are seen as deepening the rift between the country's governing African National Congress and an impoverished electorate confronting massive unemployment and growing poverty and inequality.
They "awaken us to the reality of the time bomb that has stopped ticking - it has exploded," The Sowetan newspaper said in an editorial. "Africans are pitted against each other ... fighting for a bigger slice of the mineral wealth of the country. In the end the war claims the very poor African - again."
Police ministry spokesman Zweli Mnisi told The Associated Press on Friday that more than 30 people were killed. He said an investigation into the shooting near Marikana, about 70 kilometres (40 miles) northwest of Johannesburg, is underway. Political parties and labour unions, including the African National Congress, called for an independent inquiry.
Provincial health spokesman Tebogo Lekgethwane said no wounded people have been treated at nearby hospitals.
Shocked South Africans watched replay after replay of video of the shooting that erupted Thursday afternoon after police failed to get the striking miners to hand over machetes, clubs and other weapons.
Some miners did leave, though others carrying weapons began war chants and soon started marching toward the township near the mine, said Molaole Montsho, a journalist with the South African Press Association who was at the scene.
The police opened up with a water cannon first, then used stun grenades and tear gas to try and break up the crowd, Montsho said.
Suddenly, a group of miners rushed through the underbrush and tear gas at a line of police officers. Officers immediately opened fire, with miners falling to the ground. Dozens of shots were fired by police armed with automatic rifles and pistols.
Images broadcast by private e.tv station carried the sound of a barrage of automatic gunfire that ended with police officers shouting: "Cease fire!" By that time, bodies were lying in the dust, some pouring blood. Another image showed some miners, their eyes wide, looking in the distance at heavily armed police officers in riot gear.
Poor South Africans protest daily across the country for basic services like running water, housing and better health and education - all of which were promised when racist white rule ended with the first democratic elections in 1994. Protests often turn violent, with people charging that ANC leaders have joined the white minority that continues to enrich itself while life becomes ever harder for the black majority.
Police often are accused of using undue force. Still, Thursday's shooting appalled the country, recalling images of white police firing at anti-apartheid protesters in the 1960s and 1970s, though in this case it was mostly black police firing at black mine workers.
It remains unclear what sparked the miners' fatal charge at police. Mnisi, the police ministry spokesman, claimed the miners shot at police as well, using one of the weapons they stole from two policemen whom they battered to death Monday.
"We had a situation where people who were armed to the teeth, attack and killed others - even police officers," the spokesman said in a statement Thursday night. "What should police do in such situations when clearly what they are face with are armed and hardcore criminals who murder police?"
President Jacob Zuma said he was "shocked and dismayed at this senseless violence."
"We believe there is enough space in our democratic order for any dispute to be resolved through dialogue without any breaches of the law or violence," Zuma said in a statement.
Lonmin PLC chairman Roger Phillimore issued a statement Friday saying the deaths were deeply regretted. But he emphasized the mine considers it "clearly a public order rather than a labor relations associated matter."
In a statement earlier Thursday, Lonmin had said striking workers would be fired if they did not appear at their shifts Friday.
"The striking (workers) remain armed and away from work," the statement read. "This is illegal."
While the initial walkout and protest focused on wages, the ensuing violence has been fueled by the struggles between the dominant National Union of Mineworkers and the upstart and more radical Association of Mineworkers and Construction Union. Disputes between the two unions escalated into violence earlier this year at another mine.
The Congress of South African Trade Unions said the violence is being orchestrated.
"Broadly we believe there is an orchestration, a planned violence, because the violence that people are seeing today has been going on since January," said general secretary Zwelinzima Vavi.
Mining drives the economy of South Africa, which remains one of the world's dominant producers of platinum, gold and chromium. Lonmin is the world's third largest platinum producer and its mine at Marikana produces 96 percent of all its platinum. The violence has shaken the precious metals market, as platinum futures ended up $39, or 2.8 percent, at $1,435.20 an ounce in trading Thursday on the New York Mercantile Exchange.
Lonmin stock plunged 6.76 percent Thursday on the London Stock Exchange. The company's stock value has dropped more than 12 percent since the start of the unrest.